FREEPORT — The city may reopen a stretch of Liberty Avenue by September as repairs are made to the Rawleigh Complex walkway.

Aldermen unanimously approved a $43,260 contract Monday with Mike Harris Mason Contractors to patch the walkway. The Rockford firm’s bid was $15,000 lower than city estimates.

A portion of Liberty has been closed since September 2012, when dust and debris began falling off the walkway of the old industrial property.

“There’ll be some brick relaying and stone going in,” said Ken Baraconi, estimates project manager. “All of it will be taken care of in this project.”

Repairing the walkway will be cheaper than tearing it down, which could cost more than $100,000, Mayor Jim Gitz said. Tthe walkway is structurally sound; water that seeped behind the brick facade over time caused it to crumble.

Rawleigh, a 465,000-square-foot industrial complex built in 1926, was a food processing center for everything from nutritional supplements to spices. It closed in the late 1980s, and the city took ownership in the early 2000s. Its redevelopment is atop the city’s urban renewal agenda, but the task has proved daunting.